What is Omni?
Omni is the library search tool used to find items in Queen's Libraries and our partner libraries, as well to access articles and other electronic resources but NOT everything is included.
Discover the features of Omni in our quick guide.
Detailed information about how to search Omni is available in the Omni Search Tips guide.
Subject headings allow you to search for resources on a particular author or topic and are often more productive than keyword searches.
Keyword searches work best if you have multiple concepts or topics. Think of the words that best describe your topic and then connect them with the boolean operators AND OR NOT.
One strategy to find books on your topic is to use a keyword search to find relevant subjects that you can click on to find more books on the same topic.
Topic: Symbolism and art in the French revolution.
|
Search Technique |
What It Does |
|
quotation marks |
Searches for exact phrase |
|
Truncation * |
Searches for all forms of a word |
|
Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) |
Lets you broaden or narrow your search |
Subject Headings
Knowing the right subect heading can help you get to information more quickly in Omni.
For example, World War II can be described using the following terms:
You could search Omni using all those keywords. Or, you could use one subject heading to find all of the library's materials about World War II:
World war, 1939-1945
Relevant subject headings for this course include:
France--History--Revolution, 1789-1799
Industrial revolution
Industrial revolution--Great Britain
Europe--Economic conditions---19th century.
Technological innovations--Europe--History
Technological innovations--History
Standard Subdivisions
Library of Congress Subject Headings use standard subdivisions under place names (countries, states, cities and other geographic divisions) to classify works. Here are some for history, which can be further subdivided by time period.
--history
--civilization
--economic conditions
--foreign relations
--intellectual life
--personal narratives
--politics and government
--social conditions
--social life and customs
A series of volumes on specific countries or topics. Search Omni by title for Oxford History of Modern Europe to find them all. Some are available online, others only in print.